Card Range To Study

11 Cards in this Set

Family Resemblances: The idea that members of a category may be related to one another without all the members having any properties i common that define the category.

Centrality

The idea that some members of a category may be "better examples" of a category than others.

Polysemy as categorization

The idea that related meanings of words form categories and that the meanings bear family resemblances to one another

Generativity as a prototype phenomenon

This idea concerns categories that are defined by a generator (a particular member or subcategory) plus rules (or a general principle such as similarity). in such cases, the generator has the status of a central or "prototypical" category member.

Membership gradience

The idea that at least some categories have degrees of membership and no clear boundaries.

Centrality gradience

The idea that members (or subcategories) which are clearly within the category boundaries may still be more or less central.

Conceptual embodiment

The idea that the properties of certain categories are a consequence of the nature of human biological capacities and of the experience of functioning in a physical and social environment. It is contrasted with the idea that concepts exist independent of the bodily nature of any thinking beings and independent of their experience.

Functional embodiment

The idea that certain concepts are not merely understood intellectually; rather they are used automatically, unconsciously, and without noticeable effort as part of normal functioning. Concepts used in this way have a different and more important psychological status than those that are only thought about consciously.

Basic level categorization

The idea that categories are not merely organized in a hierarchy from the most general to the most specific, but are also organized so that the categories that are cognitively basic are "in the middle" of a general-to-specific hierarchy. Generalization proceeds "upward" from the basic level and specialization proceeds downward.

Basic-level primacy

The idea that basic-level categories are functionally and epistemologically primary with respect to the following factors: gestalt perception, image formation, motor movement, knowledge organization, ease of cognitive processing (learning, recognition, memory) and ease of linguistic expression.

Reference-point or metonymic reasoning

The idea that a part of a category (member or subcategory) can stand for the whole category in certain reasoning processes.